Renard Simmons, principal of the Denver Center for 21st Century Learning, has been named interim principal of Manual High School following the unexpected resignation of Manual’s leader late last week.

DC21, as it’s called, is a nearby public school serving middle and high school students. Simmons will split his time between DC21 and Manual, school district spokeswoman Nancy Mitchell said.

Simmons is not interested in becoming the permanent leader of Manual, Mitchell said. The district will conduct a search for a new principal, a process Mitchell said the district expects will take about six weeks. Meanwhile, students staged a sit-in Monday to ask for recently resigned principal Nickolas Dawkins to return.

Dawkins said in a letter to Manual’s staff that he resigned Friday after learning the district had received complaints of a hostile working environment at the school.

Manual has experienced significant leadership turnover in the past decade, as well as repeated overhauls of its academic program, including a shuttering and reopening with the promise to make it into one of the city’s premier high schools. This year, Manual was rated “orange,” the second-lowest rating on the district’s color coded scale.

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Denver teachers union members embodied the civics lessons some teach, exercising their right to vote Saturday for or against a strike after the union rejected Denver Public Schools' late Friday night pay structure proposal.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association rejected Denver Public Schools' final proposal on a new contract laying out educators' pay structure late Friday, hours before members of the teachers union were scheduled to begin voting on whether to strike in the name of fair wages.

Representatives from Denver Public Schools and its teachers union still face an $8 million gap between their two compensation proposals as bargaining was expected to continue Friday night in an attempt to avert the first walkout in the state's largest school district since 1994.